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I would like to say I am on track to complete the 30 day colouring challenge put out by The Daily Marker, but it is now Day 3 and I am just now thinking about posting something.

I decided to do a background using Colorburst together with a Tim Holtz image coloured with Zig Real Brush markers. I love Colorburst watercolours but I have come to realize that you cannot use them successfully if you are a control freak. I have also realized that you will make approximately fifteen backgrounds before selecting one for a card, so using them is not too economical either. No matter, as they are fun to use.

I got the idea for this card from…………………you guessed it……………the news. Some lady in Phoenix shot her boyfriend’s penis off and indicated he had it coming for cheating on her. He vehemently denies the cheating part but has no comment on the shooting part. Cray Cray I tell you.

Today I am posting a card I made with the Poppy Stamps die called Urban Skyline. I started by making a night sky background with some Colorburst watercolors, and then decided it might work with the die. I added some lighter color to accent the buildings.

The theme this week at Simon Says Stamp is Spread Your Wings and because the whole time I was making this card, I was saying “Bright lights, big city” in my head, I thought the card fit the theme quite well.

I usually have a new (to me) coffee stamp to use for each of these bloghops and this Fall bloghop is no exception. I know this stamp is new only to me, as it is in fact, a recently retired one from Taylored Expressions.

This stamp set spoke to me as it reminded me of my coffee meet ups at Extreme Bean with my friend MJ, who has now moved to greener pastures (literally, the greener and lusher Vancouver Island).

Supplies:

Taylored Expressions Perfect Blend stamp set, Reverse Confetti All Framed Up die, Memory Box Coffee Bean Collection die ( made a mental note that the littler beans in this set could double as mouse turds should I ever have such a need for a different card LOL), Color Burst watercolor powder, Judikins Microglaze, Tim Holtz Distress Markers, Simon Says Stamp card base, and Scor tape.

The challenge this week was to use pumpkins in three different ways. This is one of my favourite types of challenges, so I dropped what I was doing (housework………so it was an easy choice) and started to get to fun. I decided not only to use pumpkings in three different ways but to use the very same pumpkin stamp in three very different ways, Additionally, I decided to make the three cards in three different styles with three different techniques. Amazingly, they all came together and I like them all! Oh happy day!

I am once again using the Color My World stamp from Wplus9, This stamp set gives me the opportunity to create a colorful card and I took advantage of that, by pairing it with Ken Oliver’s Color Burst watercolor paints. The result is a bright happy card, that just makes me smile.

The Wednesday Challenge at Simon Says Stamp is Anything Goes, so this card will fit. The featured company is Memory Keepers and I am a big fan, so I might do another card using some of my Memory Keepers stuff. I need some St. Patrick’s Day cards STAT so hmmm………………

Most of you are probably thinking, tell us something we didn’t already know.

This time though I am talking about the Crazy Birds from Tim Holtz. Now I am beginning to think that there isn’t a serious crafter left in the world who doesn’t have at least the main set of these birds. Diehards have the Accessory Set, two sets of dies and the sentiment set as well. Luckily these birds have Mona Lisa like expressions on their faces which allows a crafter to have them thinking or doing a myriad of things and no two need be identical.

I have used the Crazy Birds before but I recently acquired the accessory set, so I wanted to take that for a test drive. For some reason, as night follows day, it seems logical to have a “techniquey” background for the Crazy Birds. I decided to create one dark background and one lighter background using the Color Burst watercolour powders. As the results are unpredictable, it is easier to make the background and then decide what the background looks like and go from there. If you are TRYING to make the background look like something specific, it is almost always doomed to failure.

When I finished the backgrounds, one looked like a night sky and the other looked like fireworks, so I decided to make one card with a night sky and the other with fireworks…….Go figure. As my brother Perry would say……………the “plan” was all coming together nicely.

I will post the Halloween one here and the Happy New Year card in a second post so that I can link them both to Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.

I thought I would post a quick Happy Thanksgiving card just to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving Weekend. However, quick just doesn’t ever seem to work out for me…………………….

I think it did turn out well in the end, even though we may up having fried Bologna for Thanksgiving dinner rather than turkey due to time constraints Oh well, what matters is FAMILY together, not what gets eaten.

I had no intention of making a Halloween card today………………nope…………but some things just happen.

Two days ago I was playing with the Color Burst Watercolors. All of the colors explode on the page when you add water which is fun, but the violet even more so. So I ended up with this wild background that was a bit too wild for what I had in mind at the time. But the purple colour got me to thinking about Halloween, and when I think about Halloween I always think of Tim Holtz………….thinking about Tim Holtz got me to thinking about a Headstone die that I got super cheap on a close out sale but had never used. Not using something always makes me feel guilty for a nano second or so about all the stuff I have. So it was a perfect solution. Use that die with your purple background. No waste ……..no guilt. But wait……..there is more………….why not use that WOW Glow in the Dark embossing powder you bought and feel even less guilty. Perfect.

So here is the card followed by THE PROBLEM:

Now THE PROBLEM:

I wanted to show you how the skeleton really does GLOW IN THE DARK but my camera did not. I tried every setting both in the camera and in my house and the answer by the camera was always……..”NO this is a stupid picture and I am not going to take it….no no no. I need to save you from the embarrassment of publishing a lousy picture…so no”

So finally on a manual setting and a shutter speed of about 5 minutes I got this beauty:

My camera is still hanging his head in shame…………but at least you can see that the skeleton does indeed GLOW IN THE DARK.